CityRealty's Top 10 Lists

New York City apartment buildings offer the best of everything: views, style, amenities, services, space, location, prestige...

CityRealty's residential architecture expert, Carter B. Horsley, has reviewed and compiled definitive Top 10 lists for every aspect of New York City apartment living and architecture. If you're looking for the right New York City apartment building with the best of something special you want in a home, or you just need to know who has the most spectacular rooftop decks in the city or the most incredible gargoyles, the CityRealty Top 10 lists let you know where it's at.

In recent years, the northwestern part of Brooklyn has undergone a dramatic construction boom that has significantly augmented its skyline. This has led to a waterfront renaissance and created a new, non-brownstone inventory of low- and mid-rise residential buildings of considerable originality. Today, Brooklyn is no longer a distant second choice, but a serious residential and cultural alternative to cookie-cutter, post-war Manhattan high-rises and more recent billionaire aeries for foreigners.

Since the millennium, the Queens waterfront neighborhood of Long Island City has encountered an incredible construction boom. With thousands of modern rental and condo units offered at bargain prices, these large new buildings can accommodate a plethora of amenities, worthy of an all-inclusive Caribbean resort. Residents in LIC are rewarded by the community's convenient location across from Midtown Manhattan, its open skies and spaces and panoramic views of the skyline --all for a fraction of the cost of a Manhattan rental. Here are our top 10 rental buildings in Long Island City based on their location, design and amenity offerings.

Loft living in New York City has changed dramaticall over the last few decades. Back in the 1960s, they were dusty and drafty places at the top of a very steep flight, or two, of wooden, dimly-lit stairs on some forsaken street off the grid in Lower Manhattan. It was where old ladies and young girls sweated, churning out haberdashery, shirts, or the like. All that changed when some near-starving artists decided to camp out and live and work in these dingy spaces that could accommodate large works of what some called art. They were illegal squatters, some with style. Before long, of course, the city passed laws to make it legal-if one was a certified artist-to live and work in these spaces. Galleries soon came to discover and exploit new artists and then the cafes and restaurants and collectors and boutiques to extract from the collectors left-over change. Landlords eventually realized that all this creativity was increasing property values, especially once someone noticed that the buildings looked pretty good when cleaned up and restored. And thus SoHo, NoHo, NoLiTa, and TriBeCa were born-all of which are now the city's hottest and most desirable neighborhoods for the young and affluent and hip and fashion-obsessed.

Why is it that TriBeca is the city's most popular neighborhood? Is it because it has the nicest cast-iron nautical school fence? Is it because it's got a nice group of small Federal buildings nestled next to the great Independence Plaza apartment towers? Is it because its proximity to the World Trade Center means it is also close to the WinterGarden of the World Financial Center at Battery Park City? Is it because Lady Liberty is regularly passed by great big oceanliners once again? Perhaps it is because it's not far from Wall Street and public transportation and places where Robert de Niro and his mavens stroll about thinking cinematically.

The Top 10 New York City condos west of Broadway on the Upper West Side are surprisingly pretty fairly split between pre- and post-war apartment buildings and those on Riverside Drive, Riverside Boulevard and West End Avenue. The top building is The Heritage at Trump Place at 245 Riverside Boulevard at the base of Riverside Drive because of its commanding vistas both of Riverside Park and the Hudson River. 222 Riverside Drive takes top honor for Riverside Drive because it gracefully mimics its pre-ward cohorts on the elegant thoroughfare. 640 West End Avenue reminds us that West End Avenue is the city's most cohesive and elegant avenue with fine pre-war buildings on both sides of the two-way street.

When it comes to envy-inducing luxury and architecture, one doesn't need to lok further than the West Side. Filled with modern and classic gems, here you'll find the city's most-coverable condos, which as you may have guessed, are havens for the rich, famous and global elite.

Macy's 4th of July fireworks display is a sight to be seen. Many people swarm along the FDR Drive to get a better view, but if you really want a unique spot to view this East River spectacle, there's really no better place than from a rooftop (or penthouse) perch high above the city.

There is something intangible about a driveway that adds glamour to a New York City apartment building. Perhaps it's the fact that residents and guests don't have to hurdle puddles in their party dresses. Perhaps it's because the hoi polloi, and the paparazzi, can be often kept at bay, at least psychologically, from penetrating too deeply onto the driveway's sidewalk. Whatever it is, there is a mystique and elegance that is tangible.

Lobbies in many of NYC's apartment buildings pack in a lot of surprises; no Plain-Jane-Brown-Paper-Wrapper spaces are these! We're talking gilded mosaic barrel vaults conjuring St. Mark's in Venice, and angled, multi-level spaces with soaring atriums and babbling brooks. Also expect to find huge coat rooms overlooking gardens and the East River, and cavernous halls fit for pharaohs!

It doesn't hurt live across the street from Central Park, the city's most impressive museum or just steps away from a flurry of top shops and restaurants. There's really no secret to living in one of 5th Avenue's most coveted residential buildings-just very, very, very good credit.

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